The Water Dancer
Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2019
Random House
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780399590597
Summary
From the National Book Award–winning author of Between the World and Me, a boldly conjured debut novel about a magical gift, a devastating loss, and an underground war for freedom.
Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her—but was gifted with a mysterious power.
Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he’s ever known.
So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia’s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the Deep South to dangerously idealistic movements in the North.
Even as he’s enlisted in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved, Hiram’s resolve to rescue the family he left behind endures.
This is the dramatic story of an atrocity inflicted on generations of women, men, and children—the violent and capricious separation of families—and the war they waged to simply make lives with the people they loved.
Written by one of today’s most exciting thinkers and writers, The Water Dancer is a propulsive, transcendent work that restores the humanity of those from whom everything was stolen. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—September 30, 1975
• Where—Baltimore, Maryland, USA
• Education—Howard University (no degree)
• Awards—National Book Award, George Polk Award, Hillman Prize (Journalism)
• Currently—lives in New York, New York
Ta-Nehisi Coates (TAH-nə-HAH-see KOHTS) is an American writer, journalist, and educator. Coates is a National Correspondent for The Atlantic, where he writes about cultural, social and political issues, particularly as regards African-Americans. In 2015, he won the National Book Award for Between the World and Me.
Coates has worked for the Village Voice, Washington City Paper, and Time. He has contributed to the New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, Washington Monthly, O, and other publications. In 2008 he published his memoir, The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood. His second book, Between the World and Me, was published in 2015 to wide acclaim.
Early life
Coates was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to father, William Paul "Paul" Coates, a Vietnam War veteran, former Black Panther, publisher and librarian, and mother, Cheryl Waters-Hassan, who was a teacher. Coates' father founded and ran Black Classic Press, a publisher specializing in African-American titles, as a grassroots organization with a printing press in the basement of their home.
Coates grew up in the Mondawmin neighborhood of Baltimore during the crack epidemic. His father had seven children—five boys and two girls, by four women (his first wife had three children, Coates' mother had two boys, and the other two women each had one child). In Coates' family the important focus was on child-rearing. The children were raised together in a close-knit family; most lived with their mothers and often visited their father. Coates, however, said he lived with his father full-time. As a Black Panther, Coates' father adhered to the Black Panther doctrine of free love rather than monogamy.
As a child Coates, enjoyed comic books and Dungeons & Dragons. His interest in books was instilled at an early age when his mother punished bad behavior by making him write essays. Another big influence was his father's work with the Black Classic Press; Coates said he read many of the books his father published.
Coates attended a number of Baltimore-area schools, including William H. Lemmel Middle School (where some scenes for The Wire TV series were shot), Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, before graduating from Woodlawn High School. His father was hired as a librarian at Howard University, which enabled some of his children to attend with tuition remission.
After high school, he attended Howard University and left without a degree after five years to start a career in journalism. He is the only child in his family without a college degree. In summer 2014, Coates attended an intensive program in French at Middlebury College to prepare for a writing fellowship in Paris.
Journalism
Coates' first journalism job was as a reporter at the the Washington City Paper; his editor was David Carr, who later wrote for the New York Times.
From 2000 to 2007, Coates worked as a journalist at various publications, including Philadelphia Weekly, Village Voice and Time. His first article for The Atlantic, "This Is How We Lost to the White Man," about Bill Cosby and conservatism, started a new, more successful phase of his career. The article led to an appointment with a regular blog column for The Atlantic, a blog that was both popular, influential and had a high level of community engagement.
Coates became a senior editor at The Atlantic, for which he wrote feature articles as well as maintained a blog. Topics covered by the blog included politics, history, race, culture as well as sports, and music.
His writings on race, such as his September 2012 Atlantic cover piece "Fear of a Black President," and his June 2014 feature "The Case for Reparations," received special praise and won his blog a place on the Best Blogs of 2011 list by Time magazine, as well as the 2012 Hillman Prize for Opinion & Analysis Journalism. The blog's comment section has also received praise for its high level of engagement; Coates curates and moderates the comments heavily so that, "the jerks are invited to leave [and] the grown-ups to stay and chime in."
In discussing his Atlantic article on "The Case for Reparations," Coates said he had worked on the article for almost two years, reading Rutgers University professor Beryl Satter's book, Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America,. Satter's book is a history of redlining, which discussed the grassroots organization, the Contract Buyers League, of which Clyde Ross was one of the leaders. The focus of the article was more on the institutional racism of housing discrimination than on reparations for slavery.
Coates has worked as a guest columnist for the New York Times. He turned down an offer from them to become a regular columnist.
Books
In 2008, Coates published The Beautiful Struggle, a memoir about coming of age in West Baltimore and its effect on him. In the book, he discusses the influence of his father, a former Black Panther; the prevailing street crime of the era and its effects on his older brother; his own troubled experience attending Baltimore-area schools; and his eventual graduation and enrollment in Howard University.
Coates' second book, Between the World and Me, was published in July 2015. Coates said that one of the origins of the book came from the murder of a college friend Prince Carmen Jones Jr. who was killed by police in a case of mistaken identity. In an ongoing discussion about reparation, continuing the work of his June 2014 Atlantic article, Coates cited the bill sponsored by Representative John Conyers "H.R.40 - Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act" that has been introduced every year since 1989. One of the themes of the book was about what physically affected African-American lives, their bodies being enslaved, violence, that come from slavery and various forms of institutional racism.
Teaching
Coates was the 2012–14 MLK visiting professor for writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined the City University of New York as its journalist-in-residence in the fall of 2014.
Personal life
Coates currently resides in Harlem with his wife, Kenyatta Matthews, and son, Samori Maceo-Paul Coates. His son is named after Samori Ture, a Mande chief who fought French colonialism, after black Cuban revolutionary Antonio Maceo Grajales, and after Coates' father. Coates met his wife when they were both students at Howard University. He is an atheist and a feminist.
Coates says that his first name, Ta-Nehisi, is an Egyptian name his father gave him that means Nubia, and in a loose translation is "land of the black." Nubia is a region along the Nile river located in current day northern Sudan and southern Egypt. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/27/2015.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review) [A] wonderful novel…. In prose that sings and imagination that soars, Coates further cements himself as one of this generation’s most important writers…. This is bold, dazzling, and not to be missed.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Coates brings his considerable talent for racial and social analysis to his debut novel, which captures the brutality of slavery…. Beautifully written, this is a deeply and soulfully imagined look at slavery and human aspirations.
Booklist
(Starred review) [M]agic, adventure, and antebellum intrigue.… Coates' imaginative spin on the Underground Railroad's history is as audacious as Colson Whitehead's, if less intensely realized…[but] deepened by historical facts and contemporary urgency.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Why do you think Coates uses terms like "Tasked" and "Quality" instead of "slaves" and "masters"? What do you think the novel gains from this altered language?
2. Hiram says that the Tasked are "Blessed, for we do not bear the weight of pretending pure." How does Coates define morality in the novel? In what ways does Hiram’s notion of morality differ from that of the Quality, or even Corinne?
3. What do you make of Howell Walker’s apology? To what extent does Coates humanize Howell? Why do you think he does this?
4. What roles do the concepts of motherhood and fatherhood play in the novel? How does Hiram, and perhaps by extension, Coates, define family?
5. Sophia tells Hiram, "But what you must get, is that for me to be yours, I must never be yours." What is Coates saying about the particular struggles of black women in this novel? How does Hiram’s relationship with Sophia change over time to reflect this?
6. Characters like Corrine and Seth Conklin risk their lives to work for the Underground, while also allowing Hiram and some of its other members to come to harm for the greater good of the organization. What might Coates be trying to say about the relationship between white people and racial justice with these characters?
7. Discuss Harriet’s role in the story. Did you know immediately who she was? What impact does the inclusion of a historical figure have on the narrative?
8. What is the significance of water throughout the book? Why do you think Coates chooses it as the medium for Hiram’s power?
9. Coates is best known for his works of nonfiction; The Water Dancer is his first novel. Why do you think he chose to explore the themes of slavery and the Underground Railroad through fiction? What is gained when the book isn’t tethered to historical fact? What is lost?
10. American slavery and its effects are a well-trod subject in both history and literature. What does The Water Dancer add to our understanding of how enslaved people suffered? What does the novel add to our understanding of the agency, resilience, and strength of enslaved people during that time?
11. How are the themes of The Water Dancer relevant to modern discussions of race, privilege, and power?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Almost Sisters
Joshilyn Jackson, 2017
HarperCollins
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062105714
Summary
A powerful, emotionally resonant novel of the South that confronts the truth about privilege, family, and the distinctions between perception and reality—-the stories we tell ourselves about our origins and who we really are.
Superheroes have always been Leia Birch Briggs’ weakness. One tequila-soaked night at a comics convention, the usually level-headed graphic novelist is swept off her barstool by a handsome and anonymous Batman.
It turns out the caped crusader has left her with more than just a nice, fuzzy memory. She’s having a baby boy—an unexpected but not unhappy development in the thirty-eight year-old’s life.
But before Leia can break the news of her impending single-motherhood (including the fact that her baby is biracial) to her conventional, Southern family, her step-sister Rachel’s marriage implodes. Worse, she learns her beloved ninety-year-old grandmother, Birchie, is losing her mind, and she’s been hiding her dementia with the help of Wattie, her best friend since girlhood.
Leia returns to Alabama to put her grandmother’s affairs in order, clean out the big Victorian that has been in the Birch family for generations, and tell her family that she’s pregnant.
Yet just when Leia thinks she’s got it all under control, she learns that illness is not the only thing Birchie’s been hiding. Tucked in the attic is a dangerous secret with roots that reach all the way back to the Civil War.
Its exposure threatens the family’s freedom and future, and it will change everything about how Leia sees herself and her sister, her son and his missing father, and the world she thinks she knows. (From the publisher.)
• Birth—February 27, 1968
• Where—Fort Walton Beach, Florida, USA
• Education—B.A., Georgia State University; M.A., University of Illinois
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Decatur, Georgia
Joshilyn Jackson is the author of several novels, all national best sellers. She was born into a military family, moving often in and out of seven states before the age of nine. She graduated from high school in Pensacola, Florida, and after attending a number of different colleges, earned her B.A. from Georgia State University. She went on to earn an M.A. in creative writing from University of Illinois in Chicago.
Having enjoyed stage acting as a student in Chicago, Jackson now does her own voice work for the audio versions of her books. Her dynamic readings have won plaudits from AudioFile Magazine, which selected her for its "Best of the Year" list. She also made the 2012 Audible "All-Star" list for the highest listener ranks/reviews; in addition, she won three "Listen-Up Awards" from Publisher's Weekly. Jackson has also read books by other authors, including Lydia Netzer's Shine Shine Shine.
Novels
All of Jackson's novels take place in the American South, the place she knows best. Her characters are generally women struggling to find their way through troubled lives and relationships. Kirkus Reviews has described her writing as...
Quirky, Southern-based, character-driven...that combines exquisite writing, vivid personalities, and imaginative storylines while subtly contemplating race, romance, family, and self.
2005 - Gods in Alabama
2006 - Between, Georgia
2008 - The Girl Who Stopped Swimming
2010 - Backseat Saints
2012 - A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty
2013 - Someone Else's Love Story
2016 - The Opposite of Everyone
2017 - The Almost Sisters
2019 - Never Have I Ever
Awards
Jackson's books have been translated into a dozen languages, won the Southern Indie Booksellers Alliance's SIBA Novel of the Year, have three times been a #1 Book Sense Pick, twice won Georgia Author of the Year, and three times been shortlisted for the Townsend Prize. (Author's bio adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
The Almost Sisters is one of the most delightful books I’ve read in a good while — it’s packed with Jackson’s trademark blend of quirky and endearing characters, who find themselves in messes of their own making. (Don’t we all.) Lots for book groups to talk about, so be sure to put this one on your list. READ MORE…
Molly Lundquist - LitLovers
Jackson has packed in all the drama needed for a fast-paced summer read, but this isn’t your average beach book. Dark secrets and racism plague Grandma Birchie’s seemingly charming southern town, and…villains aren’t [always] easy to identify.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [A] light-dark Southern story…. Book clubs will find much to talk about in this multigenerational, Southern tale of sisters, friendship, and small-town life, including the author's signature quirky characters and deft touch. —Laurie Cavanaugh, Thayer P.L., Braintree, MA
Library Journal
[C]ompulsively readable.… Jackson’s characteristic humor, absorbing characters, and candid depictions of messy families.
Booklist
(Starred review.) [A]nother spirited page-turner set in a new South still haunted by the ghosts of the old.… Perhaps the novel overreaches—the ending is a bit sober for what comes before—but it's not a major flaw. A satisfying, entertaining read from an admired writer who deserves to be a household name.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Throughout the story Leia deals with motherhood in many iterations—when she gets pregnant, when she reverses roles with Birchie, when she sees Rachel floundering and must help Lavender. How does Leia grow as a mother throughout the story? Leia mentions speaking in "unbrookable mother," what do you think she means by that?
2. Leia makes the decision to hide her pregnancy early on, and keeps her secret throughout much of the story. Do you think Leia made the right decision? Were you surprised by characters’ reactions when her pregnancy was revealed?
3. Leia sees her comic book characters as reflections of her inner self—Violet as a reflection of her own innocence, and Violence as her doppelganger. Do you also feel like you have multiple versions of yourself?
4. We see Jake as Leia’s ex-best friend, as Rachel’s husband, and as Lavender’s father. How does your impression of him change throughout the story? Do you feel more sympathy for Rachel or Jake during their conflict?
5. After discovering the trunk of bones, Birchie says, "I told you the first night you were here. I told you at dinner." Did you have any idea who Birchie had been referring to? Were you surprised by what really happened?
6. Despite her worsening dementia, Birchie remains a strong character throughout the book. How would you describe her lifelong friendship with Wattie? Did your impressions change throughout the novel? Why do you think Birchie chose to keep their true relationship a secret even as times changed?
7. For much of the story, Selcouth Martin is referred to only as "Batman." Were you surprised by how different he was from Leia’s memory of their one-night stand? How did your impression of Selcouth change throughout the novel?
8. There are multiple relationships in the novel that fit the title The Almost Sisters description. How did the title take on new meaning to you as the story developed?
9.At the end of the novel, Selcouth is there for the birth of his son. What was your impression of the nature of Leia and Selcouth’s relationship at this point? Do you want them to be together?
10.Leia is a comic book artist who has found herself up against a creative roadblock. Has this happened to you and how have you worked through it?
11.The Almost Sisters deals with difficult topics like race, privilege and family. Everyone has biases—in life and in books—but some people handle them better than others. Which of these characters dealt with these the best? The worst? Do you see similar situations or challenges in your own life?
12.Leia talks about there being two Souths that exist simultaneously. Do you agree?
(Questions are issued by the publisher.)
Noir
Christopher Moore, 2018
HarperCollins
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062433978#
Summary
The absurdly outrageous, sarcastically satiric, and always entertaining New York Times bestselling author Christopher Moore returns in finest madcap form with this zany noir set on the mean streets of post-World War II San Francisco, and featuring a diverse cast of characters, including a hapless bartender; his Chinese sidekick; a doll with sharp angles and dangerous curves; a tight-lipped Air Force general; a wisecracking waif; Petey, a black mamba; and many more.
San Francisco. Summer, 1947. A dame walks into a saloon …
It’s not every afternoon that an enigmatic, comely blonde named Stilton (like the cheese) walks into the scruffy gin joint where Sammy "Two Toes" Tiffin tends bar.
It’s love at first sight, but before Sammy can make his move, an Air Force general named Remy arrives with some urgent business. ’Cause when you need something done, Sammy is the guy to go to; he’s got the connections on the street.
Meanwhile, a suspicious flying object has been spotted up the Pacific coast in Washington State near Mount Rainer, followed by a mysterious plane crash in a distant patch of desert in New Mexico that goes by the name Roswell. But the real weirdness is happening on the streets of the City by the Bay.
When one of Sammy’s schemes goes south and the Cheese mysteriously vanishes, Sammy is forced to contend with his own dark secrets—and more than a few strange goings on—if he wants to find his girl.
Think Raymond Chandler meets Damon Runyon with more than a dash of Bugs Bunny and the Looney Tunes All Stars. It’s all very, very Noir. It’s all very, very Christopher Moore. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 5, 1958
• Where—Toledo, Ohio, USA
• Education—Ohio State Univ., Brooks Inst. of Photography
• Awards—Quill Award, 2005 and 2006
• Currently—Hawaii and San Francisco, California
A 100-year-old ex-seminarian and a demon set off together on a psychotic road trip...
Christ's wisecracking childhood pal is brought back from the dead to chronicle the Messiah's "missing years"...
A mild-mannered thrift shop owner takes a job harvesting souls for the Grim Reaper...
Whence come these wonderfully weird scenarios? From the fertile imagination of Christopher Moore, a cheerfully demented writer whose absurdist fiction has earned him comparisons to master satirists like Kurt Vonnegut, Terry Pratchett, and Douglas Adams.
Ever since his ingenious debut, 1992's Practical Demonkeeping and his 2002 Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff , Moore has attracted an avid cult following. But, over the years, as his stories have become more multi-dimensional and his characters more morally complex, his fan base has expanded to include legions of enthusiastic general readers and appreciative critics.
Asked where his colorful characters come from, Moore points to his checkered job resume. Before becoming a writer, he worked at various times as a grocery clerk, an insurance broker, a waiter, a roofer, a photographer, and a DJ — experiences he has mined for a veritable rogue's gallery of unforgettable fictional creations. Moreover, to the delight of hardcore fans, characters from one novel often resurface in another. For example, the lovesick teen vampires introduced in 1995's Bloodsucking Fiends are revived (literally) for the 2007 sequel You Suck—which also incorporates plot points from 2006's A Dirty Job.
For a writer of satirical fantasy, Moore is a surprisingly scrupulous researcher. In pursuit of realistic details to ground his fiction, he has been known to immerse himself in marine biology, death rituals, Biblical scholarship, and Goth culture. He has been dubbed "the thinking man's Dave Barry" by none other than The Onion, a publication with a particular appreciation of smart humor.
As for story ideas, Moore elaborates on his website: "Usually [they come] from something I read. It could be a single sentence in a magazine article that kicks off a whole book. Ideas are cheap and easy. Telling a good story once you get an idea is hard." Perhaps. But, to judge from his continued presence on the bestseller lists, Chris Moore appears to have mastered the art.
Extras
From a 2006 Barnes & Noble interview:
• In researching his wild tales, Moore has done everything from taking excursions to the South Pacific to diving with whales. So what is left for the author to tackle? He says he'd like to try riding an elephant.
• One of the most memorably weird moments in Moore's body of work is no fictional invention. The scene in Bloodsucking Fiends where the late-night crew of a grocery store bowls with frozen turkeys is based on Moore's own experiences bowling with frozen turkeys while working the late shift at a grocery store.
• When asked what book influenced his career as a writer, he answered:
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. In Cannery Row, Steinbeck writes about very flawed people, but with great affection, and by doing so, shows us that it is our flaws that make us human, and that is what we share, that is our humanity. A friend of mine used to say, "He writes with the voice of a benevolent God." In the process, the book is also very funny. I think I saw that as a model, as a guide. I'd always written humor that was fairly edgy, but here was a guy writing with great power and gentle humor. I was moved and inspired." (Author bio Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Christopher Moore gives us dizzy dames and shadowy gangsters in Noir. Sammy, Moore’s comic revision of Sam Spade, will take you on a silly-thrilly ride through late-1940s San Francisco, and you’ll be laughing all the way.
Washington Post
Moore is a master of metaphor and a sultan of simile.… It takes an author of remarkable talents to keep a profitably urinating snake, a dame named for a dairy product, and a slimy extraterrestrial all running through a narrative.
Washington Independent Review of Books
[A] irreverent send-up.… [T]hings just get stranger in this work that puts an amusing spin on the noir subgenre. An author’s note gives fair warning of the characters’ era-appropriate language and attitudes, which may be disturbing to some readers.
Publishers Weekly
Raymond Chandler meets the SyFy channel in Moore's latest humorous adventure. Fans of noir film and fiction will find a lot to enjoy in this loving genre tribute, and those already familiar with Moore's books will simply be in love. —Elisabeth Clark, West Florida P.L., Pensacola
Library Journal
(Starred review) [A] pedal-to-the-metal, exquisitely written comic romp through a neon-lit San Francisco that may never have actually existed, but that, in Moore’s supremely talented hands, sure feels like it could have.
Booklist
There is a laugh-out-loud moment every couple of pages. And possibly a space alien, because, hey, this is a Christopher Moore book, after all.
Bookage
Moore's introduction of an interrupting, semi-omniscient second narrator between Sammy's first-person tale can be jarring, even if it is explained late in the book. The novel finally coalesces in its back half…. A frantically comic tale of guys and dolls that shoots and just misses.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for NOIR … then take off on your own:
1. In Christopher Moore's other novels, his main characters are hardly "alpha males"; in fact, they tend to be "beta males." How does Sammy Tiffin fit that description—perhaps he's a little aimless or unfocused or … what else? How would you describe Sammy?
2. Noir takes place two years after the end of World War II. What is post-war American life like—in San Francisco and especially Chinatown—as portrayed by Moore?
3. Moore riffs on the noir genre*—crime stories first made famous in the 1930s & 40s by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Talk about certain elements that are part-and-parcel to the genre (tough-guy language, for one) and how "noir" is distinct from other crime tales. What are the ways in which Moore's novel both pokes fun at and pays tribute to the noir style?
4. Noir writers draw on analogies in their writing. Point to some of Moore's: this one, for instance, "he smiled like a dog at a barbecue for the blind."
5. What, in particular, made you laugh? Does Moore sustain the comedy and wacky banter throughout the novel? Does it become funnier … or does the humor fall off? Do you have some favorite lines?
6. Do you have any characters you were fond of—Petey, say, or Eddie? Cheese? Moonman?
7. Did the shift in point-of-view, from the first person to third-person narrative, confuse you? When did you figure out the identity of the speaker?
8. If you've read other Christopher Moore books, how does Noir compare?
* "Noir" in our usage is comparable to what is also called the "hardboiled" genre.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Red at the Bone
Jacqueline Woodson, 2019
Penguin Publishing
208 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525535270
Summary
An extraordinary new novel about the influence of history on a contemporary family, from the New York Times-bestselling and National Book Award-winning author of Another Brooklyn and Brown Girl Dreaming.
Two families from different social classes are joined together by an unexpected pregnancy and the child that it produces.
Moving forward and backward in time, with the power of poetry and the emotional richness of a narrative ten times its length, Jacqueline Woodson's extraordinary new novel uncovers the role that history and community have played in the experiences, decisions, and relationships of these families, and in the life of this child.
As the book opens in 2001, it is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody's coming of age ceremony in her grandparents' Brooklyn brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, making her entrance to the soundtrack of Prince, she wears a special custom-made dress.
But the event is not without poignancy. Sixteen years earlier, that very dress was measured and sewn for a different wearer: Melody's mother, for her own ceremony-- a celebration that ultimately never took place.
Unfurling the history of Melody's parents and grandparents to show how they all arrived at this moment, Woodson considers not just their ambitions and successes but also the costs, the tolls they've paid for striving to overcome expectations and escape the pull of history.
As it explores sexual desire and identity, ambition, gentrification, education, class and status, and the life-altering facts of parenthood, Red at the Bone most strikingly looks at the ways in which young people must so often make long-lasting decisions about their lives--even before they have begun to figure out who they are and what they want to be. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth— February 12, 1963
• Where—Columbus, Ohio, USA
• Raised—Geenville, South Carolina, and Brooklyn, New York
• Education—B.A., Adelphi University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York
Jacqueline Woodson is an American writer of books for children and teens. She is best known for her 2014 Bown Girl Dreaming, which won the National Book Award and a Newbery Honor. In 2016, she published her first adult novel, Another Brooklyn, and in 2019 she released her second adult novel, Red at the Bone, both to wide praise.
Woodson's youth was split between South Carolina and Brooklyn. In a 2002 interview with Publishers Weekly she recalled:
The South was so lush and so slow-moving and so much about community. The city was thriving and fast-moving and electric. Brooklyn was so much more diverse: on the block where I grew up, there were German people, people from the Dominican Republic, people from Puerto Rico, African-Americans from the South, Caribbean-Americans, Asians.
After college at Adelphi University, Woodson went to work for Kirchoff/Wohlberg, a literary agent for children's authors. She caught the attention of a book agent, and athough the partnership did not work out, it got her first manuscript out of a drawer.
She later enrolled in Bunny Gable's children's book writing class at the New School in New York, where an editor at Delacorte, heard a reading from Last Summer with Maizon and requested the manuscript. Delacorte bought the manuscript and published Woodson's first six books.
Writing
As an author, Woodson is known for the detailed physical landscapes she writes into each of her books. She places boundaries everywhere—social, economic, physical, sexual, racial—then has her characters break through both the physical and psychological boundaries to create a strong and emotional story.
She is also known for her optimism. She has said that she dislikes books that do not offer hope. She has offered William H. Armstrong's 1969 novel Sounder as an example of "bleak" and "hopeless"; on the other hand, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn offers "moments of hope and sheer beauty" despite the family's poverty. She uses this philosophy in her own writing, saying, "If you love the people you create, you can see the hope there."
Woodson has tackled topics such as interracial coupling, teenage pregnancy, and homosexuality—subjects not commonly or openly discussed when her books were published. Overall, she explores issues of class, race, family ties, and history in ground-breaking ways, and she does so by placing sympathetic characters into realistic situations. Many of her characters, who might be considered "invisible" in the eyes of society, engage in a search for self-identity rather than equality or social justice.
Some of the content in Woodson's books, however, has raised flags—homosexuality, child abuse, harsh language, and teen pregnancy have led to threats of censorship. In an NPR interview Woodson said that her books contain few curse words and that the difficulty adults have with her subject matter has more to do with their own discomfort than what young people should be thinking about. She suggests parents and teachers assess the many cultural influences over teens and then make a comparison with how her books treat those same issues.
Honors
Woodson's books have won numerous awards, including four Newbery Honors for Brown Girl Dreaming (2014), After Tupac & D Foster (2008), Feathers (2007), and Show Way (2005). Miracle's Boys (2000) won the Loretta Scott King Award. In 2005 Woodson won the Margaret Edwards Award for her lifetime contribution as a children's writer.
In 2014 Brown Girl Dreaming won the national Book Award for Young People's Literature. That same year she was the U.S. nominee to the international Hans Christian Andersen Awards and became one of the Award's six finalists. In 2015 the Poetry Foundation named Woodson the Young People's Poet Laureate.
Racial joke
When Woodson received her National Book Award in November, 2014, author Daniel Handler, the evening's emcee, made a joke about watermelons. In a New York Times Op-Ed piece, "The Pain of the Watermelon Joke," Woodson explained that "in making light of that deep and troubled history," Handler had come from a place of ignorance. She underscored the need for her mission to "give people a sense of this country's brilliant and brutal history, so no one ever thinks they can walk onto a stage one evening and laugh at another's too often painful past."
Handler, a friend of Woodson, issued multiple apologies and donated $10,000 to We Need Diverse Books, promising to match donations up to $100,000. "It was a disaster of my own making, he said. "[M]any, many people were very upset by it, and rightfully so."
Personal
Woodson is a lesbian with a partner and two children, a daughter named Toshi Georgianna and a son named Jackson-Leroi. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/17/2016.)
Book Reviews
Woodson manages to remember what cannot be documented, to suggest what cannot be said.
Washington Post
Woodson does for young black girls what short story master Alice Munroe does for poor rural ones: She imbues their everyday lives with significance.
Elle
Woodson writes lyrically about what it means to be a girl in America, and what it means to be black in America. Each sentence is taut with potential energy, but the story never bursts into tragic flames; it stays strong and subtle throughout.
Huffington Post
Emotionally transfixing.
Entertainment Weekly
A slim novel with tremendous emotional power.
Real Simple
Red at the Bone is fall’s hottest novel.
Town & Country
[A]s teenage Melody takes part in a coming-of-age ceremony, the history of her New York family unfurls, and three generations of longing and ambition come into razor-sharp focus.
Vanity Fair
Slender miracle of a novel [that] performs a magic trick with time…. Woodson skips back and forth between the decades so deftly that it feels like it all happens in a heartbeat.
Family Circle
(Starred review) [A] beautifully imagined novel.… Woodson’s nuanced voice evokes the complexities of race, class, religion, and sexuality in fluid prose and a series of telling details. This is a wise, powerful, and compassionate novel.
Publishers Weekly
Oft-crowned children's/YA author Woodson… [offers] a tale of two families separated by class, ambition, gentrification, sexual desire, and unexpected parenthood.
Library Journal
(Starred review) [E]motionally rich…. Woodson channels deeply true-feeling characters, and [i]n spare, lean prose, she reveals rich histories and moments in swirling eddies, while also leaving many fateful details for readers to divine. —Annie Bostrom
Booklist
(Starred review) [E]motionally rich…. Woodson channels deeply true-feeling characters, all of whom read Woodson famously nails the adolescent voice. But so, too, she burnishes all her characters' perspectives…. In Woodson, at the height of her powers, readers hear the blues: "beneath that joy, such a sadness."
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. In Red at the Bone, two families from different social classes are brought together by an unexpected pregnancy. How do you think the lives of the characters—from each family—might have been different if Melody had never been conceived? Which characters gained or lost the most, ultimately, as a result of this unplanned child? Consider all the many ways in which their fortunes were altered.
2. Consider the title and how it works with the story. Why do you think the author chose it? What does the phrase mean to you?
3. The author dedicates the book to “the ancestors, a long long line of you bending and twisting.” How does the story explore the idea of legacy? How does it look at the passing down of regret and loss and trauma and history, and also of love and guidance and wisdom and experience? Discuss your own legacies: What have you inherited in this way from your ancestors, and what will be passed on to future generations? How do these legacies compare to the legacies in Red at the Bone?
4. The story begins and ends in Brooklyn, but incorporates the stories of how both Iris and Aubrey’s families came to live there, and also watches Iris experiment with living elsewhere. In your own experience, how strong or important is the connection between people and place? Do you think people and their lives are shaped by their relationships with the places they are from and their feelings about home? Do you see this illustrated in the story, in any particular characters or storylines? What do you think of Iris’s decision to stay away from her family? Can you empathize with her?
5. The theme of mothers and daughters is one that plays throughout the book, and we begin and end the novel with Iris and Melody. How would you describe their relationship? Do you think their relationship has progressed, regressed, or otherwise changed by the conclusion of the novel? In what ways are Iris and Melody similar and in what ways are they different?
6. When Aubrey first brings Iris to his house, he feels a kind of shame about his mother and his way of life that he never experienced before. Consider the different ways in which Aubrey and Iris’s class differences manifest within their relationship. How do those differences affect their relationship as teenagers? As adults? How do other characters in the novel grapple with their class? Consider the upbringings of CathyMarie, Aubrey, Sabe, Melody, and Iris. What do you think the novel is saying about the relationship between race, class, and education?
7. Some of the big historic events that happen in the background of the narrative include the Tulsa massacre of 1921, the crack epidemic of the 1980s and ’90s, and the attacks on the Twin Towers in 2001. How does the author use these events in the book? What do they provide to the structure of the story and time line? What do they contribute to our emotional understanding of the characters? Are the individual characters changed by these events? Do you see this history influencing their outlooks and their ambitions or their legacies? As a child Iris fought with Sabe about the Tulsa story, claiming it wasn’t her history. Is Iris right? Can history truly belong to someone? And who is allowed to tell the story?
8. Discuss the use of musical references in the novel. How does “Darling Nikki” shape our impression of Melody in the first chapter? How does music aid in telling the stories of the other characters and their respective generations: Sabe and Po’Boy? Iris and Aubrey? Slip Rock and CathyMarie?
9. What do we learn about the characters from the way they show their love to each other: From Aubrey’s love of his mother? From Iris’s love of Jam? From Sabe’s love of Po’Boy? From Melody’s love of Malcolm, and vice versa? How does time away from the loved one affect that love? Are there right ways and wrong ways to love, and if so, who exemplifies them within the novel?
10. What do you think the author is saying, ultimately, about generational trauma? Sabe declares: “I carry the goneness. Iris carries the goneness. And watching her walk down those stairs, I know now that my grandbaby [Melody] carries the goneness too.” What do you think she means by this? How does this goneness affect their lives and relationships with others? Is there an opposite to goneness, and if so, is it achievable for any of the characters?(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Afterlife
Marcus Sakey, 2017
Amazon Publishing
318 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781477848401
Summary
Between life and death lies an epic war, a relentless manhunt through two worlds…and an unforgettable love story.
The last thing FBI agent Will Brody remembers is the explosion—a thousand shards of glass surfing a lethal shock wave.
He wakes without a scratch.
The building is in ruins. His team is gone. Outside, Chicago is dark. Cars lie abandoned. No planes cross the sky. He’s relieved to spot other people—until he sees they’re carrying machetes.
Welcome to the afterlife.
Claire McCoy stands over the body of Will Brody. As head of an FBI task force, she hasn’t had a decent night’s sleep in weeks. A terrorist has claimed eighteen lives and thrown the nation into panic.
Against this horror, something reckless and beautiful happened. She fell in love…with Will Brody.
But the line between life and death is narrower than any of us suspect—and all that matters to Will and Claire is getting back to each other.
From the author of the million-copy bestselling Brilliance Trilogy comes a mind-bending thriller that explores our most haunting and fundamental question: What if death is just the beginning?
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1974
• Where—Flint, Michigan, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Michigan
• Currently—lives in Chicago, Illinois
Marcus Sakey is an American award-winning novelist, originally of crime thrillers and later speculative fiction. Most notably, he wrote The Brilliance Trilogy (2013-2016), a mixture of futurism, technology, genetics, and more.
Sakey was born in Flint, Michigan, where he attended the University of Michigan (1992–1996) with a double major in communication and political science. Following graduation, he worked in advertising, marketing, tv, and graphic design, once owning his own design studio in Atlanta. That 10-year-long interlude, as he says on his website, was the perfect background for a crime writer—it allowed him "plenty of exposure to liars and thieves."
Eventually let go from his last advertising job—a job he disliked and had already decided to leave—Sakey collected a severance package and spent the next year reading. After a year, he began writing, and although he hadn't set out to become a crime writer, he took a look around and realized that crime sold.
A year later, in 2007, his debut crime novel, The Blade Itself, was published. It was featured as a New York Times Editor's Pick and named one of Esquire Magazine's 5 Best Reads of that year. Best of all, it sold…enabling Sakey to devote himself full time to writing.
To research his crime novels, which are are set on the south side of Chicago, Sakey shadowed homicide detectives, gang cops, and interviewed soldiers. He rappelled with SWAT teams, hung out with bank robbers, and even dissected a brain.
The switch from the world of crime fiction to sci-fi came several years later and involved a hiking trip with writer pal Blake Crouch where the two bounced around new approaches to their novels. More ideas came as a result of his wife's professional interest in autism. From autism it was a short leap to savants (think Dustin Hoffman in The Rain Man) and eventually to the idea of "brilliants" or "abnorms," the fictional characters in The Brilliance Trilogy. Sakey describes the basis of the series in a Huffington Post interview:
Starting in the 1980s, one percent of the world's population was born with savant gifts—ways of thinking, categorizing, and dealing with the world—far exceeding those of ordinary people. They didn't possess superpowers, but the most powerful could do things like sense patterns in the stock market, or be the strategic equivalent of Einstein. Some had the ability to recognize facial features or bodily movements, allowing them to discern motives and hidden intentions of other people.
In addition to his novels, Marcus was the host and writer of the Hidden City on Travel Channel, for which he endured pepper spray and dog attacks. Sakey lives with his wife and daughter in Chicago. (Adapted from various online sources, including the author's website.)
Book Reviews
So what do you get if you cross The Lovely Bones with Netflix’s The Walking Dead? (Wait, you haven’t watched TWD? Too busy waiting for the next Game of Thrones?) What you get is Afterlife — Marcus Sakey’s smart, provocative, though sometimes silly novel. But one thing is certain: it’s unputdownable.… The premise — the idea of two worlds, the living and the dead, co-existing on separate planes, right alongside one another — is nicely done. And there’s good fun to be had. READ MORE ……
Philip J. Adler - LitLovers
(Starred review.) [A] remarkably conceived and passionately realized supernatural thriller.… Balancing lyric romance and altruistic self-sacrifice with horrifying scenes of cannibalism and wrenching violence, Sakey comes up with a fascinating answer to the eternal question of why humans exist.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Afterlife is simultaneously a beautiful love story, a grim tale of apocalyptic conflict, and an opportunity for an insightful writer to ruminate on the eternal verities. Great appeal across genres.
Booklist
(Starred review.) [A] disturbing book born in dark times but one in which Sakey employs all his storytelling gifts to craft a noodle-bender of the first order. A love story enmeshed in a twisty thriller that peels back the universe to see what lies beneath.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available.)